Ancestral Reparations
2022-2023 Cohort
Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez, she/they
Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez is an award-winning writer, public academic, and the founder of #freeblackmotherhood. Her medium of advocacy changes—but her passion for health, especially reproductive matters, remains the same.
Hawona Sullivan Janzen, she/her
Hawona Sullivan Janzen is a St. Paul, Minnesota-based artist who believes that art is the only thing that can save us from ourselves. Born and mostly raised in the Deep South, and trained as a historian and poet in the Deep North, much of her work is rooted in storytelling traditions with a distinctive focus on grief, loss, love, and hope.
Sullivan Janzen’s practice includes: poetry, playwriting, photography, music composition, social practice work, and live performance. Her writing has been featured on National Public Radio, in publications by Sister Black Press, Coffee House Press, and developed into a jazz opera at the Soap Factory Gallery. She is a recipient of several awards including: the Jerome Foundation Naked Stages Performance Art Fellowship, McKnight Foundation Artist Neighborhood Partnership grant, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership grant. She is currently an MFA candidate in the University of Minnesota’s Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice Program where she is a recipient of the Fink Family Fellowship and the Gus Gustafson Memorial Photography Fellowship. She recently completed “The Rondo Family Reunion,” a public art lawn sign project featuring photographs and poetry about life in Rondo, a historic African American neighborhood in St. Paul that was torn apart by the building of Interstate 94.
J.M. Conway, they/them
J.M. Conway is an Education Administrator, DEI Facilitator and Creative. They're a proud Black Chicagoan. They dance to the music in the supermarket and make up songs in the shower.
Jasmine Barnes, she/her
Jasmine Barnes deeply believes that joy and freedom are the natural outcomes of loving each other and ourselves. Detroit-born, Houston-raised and Chicago-based, she is an experienced facilitator and project manager with a deep commitment to relational healing, community building and creative self expression. A self-identified "relationship advocate," she brings a deep curiosity to all of her work. Jasmine's diverse background in social justice education, non-profit leadership, non-fiction storytelling and placemaking have created a unique blend of skills and interests. She's currently focused on exploring somatic healing on the personal, interpersonal, communal and ancestral levels. It's this relational healing work alongside caring for her garden and nurturing her poetry practice that ground her on this spiritual journey of being human.
Jeanine Logan, she/her/goddess
Jeanine is a midwife, herbalist, and culture bearer. She is a birth justice activist and often speaks publicly on breastfeeding, birth justice, doulas, and midwifery in the Black community and has a strong background in public health and reproductive health policy. She is the co-editor of the book Free to Breastfeed: Voices of Black Mothers. Jeanine works collectively with birth workers of color and allies to address birth inequity--including most recently on the writing and passing of HB738 which expands birth centers in the state of Illinois. She is currently working on the development of Chicago South Side Birth Center, a nonprofit, midwife-led, culturally congruent, community focused birth center to be located on Chicago’s south side. Jeanine is a wife and mama of three awesome beings, all of which were born in community (out-of-hospital); two at home and one at a birth center. Jeanine spends her extra time creating art, making herbal medicines, foraging plants, and swooning over #herbalist things.
Kamaria (Kay) Excell, she/her
Kamaria Excell is a Black Queer Feminist, Doula, and Social Worker with a decade of experience in community engagement, violence prevention, and reproductive justice work. Originally from California she credits her arts-based lens to the vibrancy of South Central LA. As a Licensed Master Social Worker, her diverse work and lived experiences have equipped her with the skills to adequately create an affirming space that allows folks to dig deeper into themes related to healing from both interpersonal trauma and systems of oppression. This approach thus centers the individual in holistically cultivating a beautiful life that centers pleasure, joy, and wellness. Having been trained in Black Feminist Theory and Praxis both within community and at Spelman College, she is sincerely invested in making a lasting impact through the mobilization of decolonial practices in fighting for the abolishment of structural and systemic barriers to equity for all folks, but especially Black folks on the margins of the margins. Her approach to this work proliferates the power of creative expression through the arts, storytelling, abolition, Afrofuturism and rootedness in the Diaspora. As one of the founders of the Mandated Supporting Collective, she has produced a compressive guide and training series entitled “Mandated Supporting” which currently provides social work students at Columbia University with updated evidence-based practices that divest from harm, centers history & intersectionality, and reflects the true responsibility of all to the families and communities they serve.
Kenisha Holloway, she/her
Kenisha Holloway is a wife, mother, entrepreneur and community organizer. The founder of Adorned with Awareness and curator of communal events where participants create organic art to facilitate solutions for growth. Her work is rooted in a diverse upbringing on Chicago's north side and experience as a community organizer. Her family arrived in Chicago, IL in the early 1950’s after moving north to Michigan from Mississippi. She enjoys researching her familial history and eager to learn tools and share this sacred journey with others. Kenisha is honored to participate in the EarthSeed Black Archival Project.
Raina J. León, she/her
Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, , profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She has received numerous fellowships and residencies. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.
Raja'Nee Redmond, she/her
Raja'Nee is an educator, oral historian, and artist who is dedicated to documenting and archiving Black stories. Rooted in a love for genealogy and capturing the legacies of her own family, Raja'Nee's work exists at the intersections of Black womanhood, history, and storytelling. She believes the most powerful thing a person can do is define themselves by telling their own stories. As a former social science educator in Chicago Public Schools, Raja'Nee taught young people to analyze oppressive systems, connect historical moments to the present, and leverage their collective power to make change. Today, she serves as the Communications and Special Projects Associate at Vocal Justice and the Director of the Scholarship Program at Delacreme Scholars. Raja'Nee earned a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and African and Black Diaspora Studies from DePaul University and a Master's in Teaching from The University of Chicago's Urban Teacher Education Program.